A Roman Catholic on the Jesuits.
—Prince Hohenlohe, in his Memoirs, thus speaks of the Jesuits:—”It is treachery, utterly opposed to my inmost nature, and is a sign of internal corruption and decay, which makes it absolutely impossible for me to give the smallest help to that party, so long as I place any value upon the whole of my past life and my dearest convictions. I pray God for strength to deliver me from the temptations of this devilish society, which works only for the subjugation of human freedom, especially of intellectual freedom; I pray that I may never be led astray from the path of truth, either by promises or threats.”
The Church of England and the Ritualists.
—Mr. A. Taylor (Liverpool, E. Toxted), in asking leave of the House to introduce a Bill to amend the Church Discipline Act, 1840, and the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, said the object of this Bill was to abolish the veto of the Bishops and to substitute deprivation for imprisonment in the case of clergymen who either in matters of ritual or doctrine defy the law. His apology for introducing this Bill now was the urgency and the critical character of the situation in the Church of England. No impartial observer would deny that the real question in connection with that Church as an Established Church was whether or not it was going to retain its Protestant character. Another Bill had been introduced by the member for Exeter, who had received the support of something like 230 members, which was sufficient proof of the weight of opinion behind the demand that something should be done. The real question behind both these Bills was whether the plant and capital of the Church of England was to be retained by a Church which we recognised, or ought to be recognised, as one of a Protestant character.
A Romish “Saint.”
—Bishop Nielsen, in his History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century, devotes a chapter to the career of Alphonsus Liguori, from which the following is an extract:—”In order to make every step painful, he often carried pebbles in his shoes, and when he was going to eat he generally hung a big stone round his neck. Three days a week he ate nothing but a thin soup and bread; when he had fish he contented himself with the scanty pickings about the head. Every time he took his frugal meal he had a box of bitter herbs by him, which he sprinkled over his food, so that both taste and smell was repulsive. Before eating sweet fruits he made them unpalatable by putting salt or bitter herbs upon them; and neither the beggars nor the cats, which were always about him, would touch his food. He never slept more than five hours, and he often spread his sheet over sharp stones which went so deep into him that the blood spurted out upon the wall.” The sad thing about all this abstemiousness was that it was done to prepare himself for heaven.
History of the Spanish Inquisition.
—Mr. Walter Walsh, in his Protestant Notes column in the English Churchman, calls attention to the republication of Lea’s History of the Inquisition in Spain:—”I am always glad,” he says, “to be able to solicit the attention of my readers to new Protestant books as they appear, when worthy of special notice. It is for this reason that I ask leave to mention the publication of the third volume of Dr. Lea’s invaluable ‘History of the Inquisition in Spain,’ which has just been issued by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. Almost all the information given in this monumental work is taken from the secret archives of the Spanish Inquisition itself, which have been thrown open to the author by the Spanish Government. The new volume deals with torture, the trial, the sentence, minor and harsher penalties, the stake, the Auto de Fe, Jews, Moriscos, Protestantism, and censorship. One more volume will complete the work. The learned author gives ample and reliable references for every statement he makes. Dr. Lea gives a description of the torture of a woman, and her exclamations while suffering, written calmly by the Secretary of the Inquisition while the process was going on, which in the calmness of its tone is more terrible than anything I have ever read (vol. iii., pages 24-26). And yet it is but a sample of tens of thousands of similar cases, for which Rome has yet to answer at the Judgment Bar of God.”
The Kaiser and Roman Catholicism.
—The clerical Eclair notes that the German Emperor, from the commencement of his reign eighteen years ago, has unceasingly regarded himself as the head of his Roman Catholic and Protestant subjects. This first stamped his government with originality after the violent attacks of the Kulturkampf, and also marked his first opposition to the régime founded by Bismarck. Within a fortnight of his coronation he proclaimed his determination to grant his royal protection to all religious confessions, and welcomed the improved relations between Germany and Rome. Again and again since this time he has repeated his promise to uphold the cause of religion against the attacks of materialism, while France has, from the Roman Catholic standpoint at least, been growing more opposed to religion every year.